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Grittibänze

This post is one that I've been meaning to do… for a year! But then - you know how it is - once December had begun, I got busy!

So this year… ta-daaaaa!

Little Swiss yeast men, called Grittibänze!

But then - you know how it is - in our tiny country, every region is proud of their own dialect and their own names for the same thing. So the folks in the Zurich area where I live call them Grittibänze. Drive an hour and you'll get to Basel where they are called Grättimänner. Cross the border a couple of miles away, the German neighbors say those are Weckmänner or Stutenkerle, the Alsatians Männeli, and our French speaking fellow Swiss bake their Bonhommes.And just as many names that are out there - at least the same amount of recipes exist. Some almost double the measurements for butter, others mix in sugar, experiment with curd as an ingredient, etc.I say save the sugar for the cookies! Here is the recipe that I use:Grittibänze Recipe4 cups flour - all purpose flour is fine, if you can find anything finer ground, even better1 teaspoon salt1/3 cup melted butter1 cup whole milk, warm8 teaspoons liquid yeast or equivalent dry yeastMix, knead well, cover with a cloth and let rise for 60 - 90 minutes.Form little guys ("freestyle" or roll out your dough and use a gingerbread man cookie cutter) and decorate with chocolate chips, nuts, raisins,…Let rise for another 30 minutes, coat with egg yolk or egg wash.Bake at 350°F for 20 - 25 minutes

This is how nice the dough looks after rising for at least an hour

Shape as best as you can

The rising process may pop out your little guys' eyeballs…Just squeeze them back in ;-)

My cute little helper in 2013

My cute little helper in 2014

It drives me crazy how they turn out sometimes.

So I use the cookie cutting method

Less is more ;-)

Once the Holidays are over, you can use the same recipe and shape braids. It's a very typical and yummy Swiss breakfast pastry. There is even a recipe on Allrecipes.com (she forgot to mention that the dough needs to rise until doubled in size before shaping)

A word to the braiding… there are people out there who use 6 or even 8 strands!! I am challenged enough with 2, but you'll be fine ;-) Otherwise you may watch this video. Some Swiss (Bernese) guys camping and baking in Alaska!

Did you catch that technique? Here's another one, closer up:

And if you don't want to do the braiding… just use cake loaf pans, works fine, too:

There's not many things smelling nicer than freshly baked Zopf. Cinnamon rolls, maybe. But that's it!Give it a try, will ya? Let me know how it turned out!

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Welcome back to 20 Days of Chill. Today's prompt is #Hashtag, and I thought I'd find out about the top 20 most popular hashtags on Instagram (Source: Huffington Post)

That is pretty generic if not lame! I think the only one I've ever used is #happy, actually it was #100happydays.

Of course I am intrigued now. How do I figure out my own most popular hashtags? Good thing I know people who know stuff. A blogger friend recommended Union Metrics, an app that analyzes just about anything you want to know about your Social Media Accounts! What day and time is best to post, who your biggest fans are, the post with the most likes, the post with the most comments,...

Unfortunately the free part of the tool only teases you, and you end up subscribing...

Surprise, recurring themes / hashtags were most popular. And this is what I paid 29 bucks for? Note: cancel account, get free one, like Iconosquare:

Welcome back, to the letter G of this year's A-Z challenge! We spent yesterday in Florence, Italy from where it's just a 6+ hours' train ride to G is for Geneva, Switzerland.

Geneva is in the French part of Switzerland, therefore you're crossing the "Röstigraben". What's that?

Literally it means hash brown ditch, and I can't believe there's a contribution on Wikipedia!

We commonly use the expression to point out the language gap. In the larger part (63%) of Switzerland we speak Swiss German. The Western part on the hash brown map is the French speaking part of Switzerland, about 23%. And of course it's not just a question of language, but also of culture and political votings.

There's a lot of stereotypes that one group of people says about the other. The Swiss Germans say that the Swiss French are on the lazy side, don't feel like taking orders or keeping deadlines, are chaotic and unreliable. Plus their language is really impossible.

I'm sure there are lots of tutorials out there, videos even. So I'll be quick.

Here's what you need: A plate A disposable plastic bowl, the size you want your igloo to be A disposable plastic cup for your igloo's entrance A bag of miniature marshmallows A lemon A sh**load of powdered sugar Patience

This is how it's done: Cut 1/3 off your cup, place it on the plate. Cut the shape of your "entrance" in your bowl, use some tape to fix

Squeeze your lemon, just use a couple of drops and mix them into the powdered sugar. You want a thick consistency. Now start building! Dunk your mini marshmallows into the sugar/lemon icing and basically build your way around and up your plastic structure!

The marshmallows are really forgiving. They allow another one to squeeze inbetween them if necessary! To be honest I expected this edible craft to end up at CraftFail like so many others of my projects. Hey, I am happy to reaport that this one turned out just fine! :-)